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Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
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25 Jun, 7 tweets, 4 min read
This is just astounding. An excellent move toward school & community health.

“To help curb the spread of COVID, all 56,000 NYC public school classrooms will be equipped w/ two air purifiers by Sept”

And “custodians have been given CO2 monitors” /1
ny.chalkbeat.org/2021/6/23/2254…
2/ Really glad to see NYC is taking the indoor air problem seriously & adding tens of thousands of HEPA filters. Not the only possible solution, but a seemingly great move.

Having custodians monitor & make decisions based on CO2 is more complicated, but still good.
ht @citlanx
3/ As for #CO2, important to keep in mind that it can be a rough proxy for aerosols emitted from people breathing. So CO2 > 800 ppm or so usually means poor ventilation.

But filters remove aerosols, not CO2. So CO2 could still be high & imply the higher risk as if no filters.
4/ However you slice the problem or manage a solution, treating indoor air of schools seriously is important for school & broader community health.
5/ That’s true now & for the upcoming Fall, as we continue to deal w/ COVID & Delta variant, but will continue to be critical for the future and many other health challenges. If we dig in and address problems now, we invest in positive health outcomes for a generation.
6/ Plenty of good threads on indoor air quality, CO2 monitoring, etc. Here is a fresh one today from @jljcolorado:
7/ The idea to add HEPA filters to every school classroom in the country has been championed by a number of experts, @CorsIAQ key among them. See below.

Rough cost analysis from February:

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More from @HuffmanLabDU

Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
25 Jun
"A simple but radical change — rearranging the musicians — could significantly reduce the aerosol buildup on stage, Dr. Saad and his colleagues reported"
Story by @EmilyAnthes
A few links to various other music-aerosol studies linked in thread below. 1/
nytimes.com/2021/06/23/hea…
The recent study by Hedworth et al. from the story above: "Mitigation strategies for airborne disease transmission in orchestras using computational fluid dynamics"
Interesting visualizations of the CFD model from the paper here & in the article. 2/
advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/26/e…
Separate work on wind instrument aerosol emission.
"Aerosol generation from different wind instruments" 3/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32952210/
Read 8 tweets
Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
23 Jun
Had a brief conversation about COVID spread yesterday w/ an extended family member (K12 principle). He said 'How is is possible that in 3 minutes you explained why ventilation, air cleaners, & masks are important better than I've heard in the last year from the CDC or anyone.' 1/
2/ He also said 'Our district did some research early on and realized how import the airborne spread was, so did a bunch of things they encouraged and put air scrubbers into all of our school rooms. I never heard anything about why it works, but what you said makes it so clear.'
3/ The short conversations underscored for me what we've been saying for months. The importance of treating shared air carefully has become common knowledge in most circles. Unfortunately, the simple messages of 'why' ventilation/filtration/masks work has often been missed.
Read 7 tweets
Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
19 May
I had a personal epiphany of sorts last night wrt my drive this year toward COVID educ. & my recent frustration wrt CDC & masks.
A 🧵 w/ a few unsolicited reflections from my separate perspectives as an aerosol scientist, lay citizen, & father of young kids w/ health needs. (1/x)
In various recent conversations & interviews, I’ve been asked my take on the new mask recommendations. First, I always fervently point out that I am not a public health expert, and I specify angles from which I feel professionally qualified to speak. 2/
Inevitably, however, people ask about my personal choices. And on that question, I’ve been somewhat conflicted, because my opinions don’t always line up with some colleagues that I deeply respect. 3/
Read 20 tweets
Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
14 May
The more I ponder this CDC decision on masks, the more frustrated I am, that:
- the people doing all the right things are the ones confused
- there is no guidance for people with kids & immunocompromised family
- the vacuum of guidance will bring confusion & moments of conflict
Frustrated that:
- this will likely cause at least some local/nat'l surges
- decisions happened before enough people could be vaxxed
- this announcement seemed rushed, without preparation for the messaging complexities
- I feel somehow grungy b/c of it all
BUT ... as I emphasized several times already -- I am an aerosol scientist and *NOT* a public health expert. I appreciate & defer to the public health experts with training and experience here.

As a lay person, all I'm saying is I'm still a little confused & frustrated.
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
13 May
I was happy to contribute to this nice @medpagetoday article by @adambrosio_ reporting on the recent #CDC brief explicitly acknowledging inhalation risk of COVID.

Short thread with some quotes, CDC links, reflections. (1/x)
medpagetoday.com/special-report…
2/ I told her that IMO: "One of the most important aspects of the recent CDC updates is that they finally remove the ambiguous, 'close-contact' terminology, which just confused the whole discussion".

That's because ...
cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…
3/ "'close-contact' refers to a distance between people -- and not a process of transmission"

"previous guidance was unclear, because it did not distinguish that inhalation can occur at both short and long distances."
Read 10 tweets
Dr. Alex Huffman Profile picture
12 May
Lots of really good insight in this piece arguing that indoor mask mandates should be lifted as vaccinations increase in a community.

I especially appreciate the personal anecdotes & perspectives from @linseymarr & @j_g_allen.
By @cheyennehaslett.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/press…
"We should not undersell the vaccines. They offer excellent protection" said @linseymarr "I think we can really start thinking about ending mask mandates once everyone who wants to be vaccinated has had a chance to be fully vaccinated. And that should be in another month or two."
"The timeline on just how soon the CDC could loosen guidelines is unclear, since experts say masks indoors should stick around until every adult who wants the vaccine has had a chance to reach full vaccination. At the same time, over 116M Americans have already hit that mark."
Read 9 tweets

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